Title: Murder on the Graf Zeppelin
Author: Samir Machado de Machado
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Release Date: December 1, 2026
Genre(s): Historical Mystery
Page Count: 307
Reviewed by: Crabbypatty
Rating: 5 stars out of 5
Blurb:
In 1933, a zeppelin leaves Nazi Germany, chartered to cross the Atlantic and land in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It’s a modern luxury holiday for travelers performing loyalty to a radicalizing Germany—until a murder in the airship’s washroom exposes the rot beneath the Reich.
Police Detective Bruno Brückner happens to be on board and is drafted to investigate, only to discover that the “Good Nazi” victim was a total fabrication. Hidden among his belongings is a stash of banned “degenerate” material. It seems everyone on board has something to hide, and even beyond Germany’s border, no one is safe to voice what they may know.
There are no good Nazis, not on this flight and not in the Fatherland. From the wealthy baroness to the antisemitic doctor, every passenger wears a mask of complicity or survival, and in this sky-high pressure cooker the truth is more dangerous than the fall.
As Brückner peels back their lies, he uncovers a startling story of fake identities, queer love, and revenge, where nothing is as it appears, until finally the secret of the “good Nazi” is revealed…
Giving fascinating insight into the “twisted psyche of fascists” (The Critic) and 1930s queer culture under Nazi rule, this thrilling historical mystery will keep readers hooked until the final page.
It’s 1933 and Detective Bruno Bruckner has reboarded the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, en route to Rio de Janeiro from Europe, after a stop in Campo do Jiquia, Recife. At the dining table that evening a new passenger Otto Klein joins Bruckner, Baroness van Hattem, Dr. Karl Kass Voegler, and Englishman William Hay, whose family made a large fortune omporting coffee from Brazil to England.
The dinner conversation ranges from the benefits of eugenics in purifying the races, “degenerate art” created by the Jews and the ideals of Nazism, etc. This is, after all, shortly after Hitler became the German chancellor, the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin was broken into and records seized, and the prosecution of Jews and those with differing sexualities.
(If you’re interested in the pre-war Germany, you might be interested in A Death in Berlin, review can be read HERE.)
The next morning Otto Klein is found poisoned, with materials in his room suggesting he is in fact Jewish as well as gay. Detective Bruckner is tasked with investigating the ultimate locked room mystery as the killer can only be aboard and must be found before the zeppelin arrives in Rio the next day and the suspects disembark and disappear, maybe forever.
The third act of this novel is brilliantly done and gives the reader a very unexpected resolution that also fits into the dangerous times leading into World War II. The author’s writing, translated from the original Portuguese, is lyrical and powerful.
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